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Chapter Text

One humid summer, when he is young – when he is very young – his mother bundles him up and pushes him towards Uncle Nok’s gleaming silver spaceship where it squats under the outer canopy of the swamp outside Tetsu Enclave.

“We cannot stay,” she explains, words riding the rush of every breath. “If we stay, others will come and they will hurt us. We must leave Rodia. We must leave now.”

Over his shoulder, he can see little dots in the sky. Smaller points, pinpricks of light against the smoky, dusky sky, fall from their holds and through the shattered skeleton of the city’s protective dome. They erupt in clouds of orange flame where they land and lick the silhouettes of surrounding buildings with greedy tongues.

They’re far enough away now so as not to hear the blasterfire and the screams. But his brain overlays the sounds over the faraway sight anyway, supplying also the hum-roar of prowling gunships and the mocking cackle of Chattzas.

“Is father coming?”, he asks, forcing his gaze back onto her face.

Mother hesitates. Something catches in her lungs. “He is helping our neighbors,” she says. “We must leave with Uncle Nok. He will keep us safe.”

Uncle Nok is by the unfurled boarding ramp, soaked in nervous sweat and carrying a blaster that looks like it hasn’t seen use in years. He takes Mother by the elbow, calls her Neela, and speaks into the fan of her ear. They think he can’t hear them, but he can. He is saying there are too many people and not enough seats. He is saying They are closing in.

Mother sets her jaw. She nods, and pulls the blaster from Uncle Nok’s hands.

“I am going to stay and find your father,” she tells him, setting her palms against his cheeks. “We will take another transport offworld. You must leave with your uncle. We will find you again once we’re away. Until then you need to be brave, and always listen to your uncle. Okay?”

“Okay,” he mumbles.

She pulls him close, wrapping her arms tight around him. There is nothing now to block his view of the inferno racing through the cracked dome, of gunships toppling buildings with the ease of a stray thought.

“I love you, Greedo,” Mother whispers. “I’ll be right behind you.”

That’s the last he remembers of home.

Chapter Text

They come to a world called Tatooine. It is nothing like home. It is dry and hot and devoid of water, and all its land is soft and grainy, sliding treacherously underfoot with every step or flung into the eyes with every breath the desert takes.  It is a harsh world; its people are similarly inclined. They don’t much care for the new arrivals, but they don’t much care about them, either.

At first the Tetsus cluster together, trying to rebuild some semblance of community. Then the rents come due, and the ration bars run out. Uncle Nok sells his spaceship to make ends meet, and even the credits from that disappear overnight, devoured by a hundred needy mouths. Social bonds break down, first with the pilfer of a few ingots from the better-off, and finally with full scale fights over crusts of bread and pallie fruits. “We’re all in this together” becomes “every man for himself”. Many turn to crime, or drink, or spice, just to deal with the ambient horror of existence. Eventually, families scatter across the planet like puff-blooms on the wind.

Eventually, among the Rodians who still believe in associating, rumors begin to circulate – rumors of a man appearing to those who had finally hit the end of their rope. Whispers of a thin Twi’lek whose pallid, clammy face is set with sharp teeth and covetous red eyes. A man who says, “I know your pain, friend, and I bring you succor. Turn your indolence to success – bathe in credits and pleasures like you’ve never known. Work for the Hutts. Work for Mighty Jabba.”

Greedo is too young to hear such whispers for himself. But he sees more shiny new blasters appearing on his kinsmen’s hips the further they drift away from the clan, and he watches them eat more food, and better, than he’s had in months.

Anyone can live like that, he realizes, if they can hold a gun and work for Jabba.

Anyone, apparently, except Uncle Nok.

Years pass. Bellies grow leaner. Everyone in Mos Espa seems to be living better than him, stuck in a one-room hut and surrounded by city congestion. This is hideously, grievously unfair.

Uncle Nok tells him that things will be better soon. Greedo fails to see how; the old man’s joints have been getting worse ever since they resettled, and his slugthrower, after years of poaching womp rat game out in the dunes, isn’t faring much better. Nok has blamed the dry heat on both issues, and no amount of credits sunk into the hope of repair thus far have been having an effect on either of them.

Such practical concerns have little effect on Nok. “Keep drinking your blue milk at dinner, son,” he tells him one night. “It’s what a good hunter needs.”

Without looking up from his datapad, Greedo asks, “If that’s true, how come you’re not drinking any?” Then, with a touch of poison: “You look like you could use it.”

Nok sighs. He puts a long-fingered hand on Greedo’s shoulder - trying to fill in for Father, the boy thinks ruefully – before going to sit in his chair. He says, “I made a promise to make sure you turned out all right, Greedo. And that’s what I’m gonna do.”

“What, by starving us?”

“My priority right now is making sure you grow up safe,” Nok replies evenly. “It may not look pretty right now. You might resent me for it. But please believe things will get better, son. I promise I’m working on it.”

“Well, work faster, Uncle. Or I might grow up and join the Hutts before you can stop me.”

“The Hutts? Don’t throw your life away for them. You and I both know you’re better than that. Besides, the thugs who work for those gangsters are no better than slaves.”

“Even a slave lives better than this,” Greedo hisses. “If you can’t even see that, you’re a bigger fool than they say.”

Nok’s face grows sad and wistful. Greedo can only stand to look at it for a half second more before he turns off the glowlamp and turns over in his cot.

 Uncle Nok leaves one morning and doesn’t come back all day.

He doesn’t come back the next day, either.

On the third day, the landlord forces him onto the street, and Greedo finally realizes how alone he truly is.

Chapter Text

The children of Mos Espa seek out each others’ company, as children do. They are slaves, orphans, scrum-rats – peasants, all. They don’t all like Greedo, exactly, but they do tolerate him. He can accept that – stars know he’s not fond of every one of them, either.

They seem to congregate around one boy in particular, like planets around a blazing star. His name is Anakin. He still lives with his mother. They are both slaves, owned by the junk dealer Watto. Though a slave, he lives well, and is growing up hale and healthy. He’s building a podracer in the back lot behind Watto’s yard, and to hear him tell it, he’s working on a protocol droid in his home that’s almost finished. He’s cheerful and kind and seemingly all of Mos Espa likes him. The children all think he’s wizard.

Some people get all the luck, Greedo fumes to himself.

There’s only one other Rodian in their little clique – he’s three years younger and about a head shorter than Anakin, and goes by the name of Wald. A nice kid, Greedo supposes, though his attitude could use adjusting. No one with so little to be happy about should be that happy, even if it’s still more than Greedo has.

Eventually - because Wald is a perceptive sort of child, the kind that doesn’t keep his mouth shut - he asks, “Hey Greedo, how come you’re so jealous of Ani?”

Greedo scowls. He’s always scowling, but this one is worse than usual. “I’m not jealous,” he insists, rubbery Rodian brows scrunching up his forehead.

“Pfft, yeah, and I’m the Tusken King!” Wald cups his hands around his snout and twirls around in place, hooting his best imitation of a Tusken Raider war cry. It is, as one might expect of a Rodian child aping a Tusken Raider, not very good.

“Stop making fun of me,” Greedo pouts, crossing his arms.

“I’m not making fun! I’m just trying to figure out why you’re so jealous.”

“I’m not!”

“Yes you are.”

“No I’m not!”

“Yes you are!”

“Well, why shouldn’t I be?!” He spits, and feels something wound tight deep inside him come unpinned, like steam breaching a gasket and hissing into open air. “He’s already so much better off than the rest of us!”

“I dunno about that,” Wald says. He’s halfhearted, wishy-washy. “He’s still a slave, after all.”

“What other slave gets to build his own podracer? Or his own droid? Or race in the Boonta Eve?” Greedo shoves his hands in his pockets and kicks at the dirt as he walks. “I never get to do anything like that. It’s not fair.”

“What can I say? Ani’s a lucky kid,” Wald says, shrugging.  “Then again, he’s still living in Slave Quarters Row with his mom, so what can you do?”

“At least he has a mom.”

The corners of Wald’s mouth pucker inwards. He plays with his fingers behind his back and tries to look very interested in the rivulets of sand shifting around on the ground.

Greedo grunts. “Whatever. It’s not like he’ll ever leave Tatooine.” he mutters. The slave tracker inside him would see to that. Wander too far away and … poof. “No matter what, he’s still gonna waste away on this dustball like the rest of us.”

“Is… that supposed to be a good thing?”

“It sounds good to me.”

Wald gives him a funny look. “You’re a weird kid, Greedo,” he says, chortling. Then he tugs on the sleeve of his roughspun tunic. “C’mon, let’s go toss rotten tip-yip eggs at Nobot. That always makes me feel better.”

Anakin wins the Boonta Eve podrace, along with his freedom. He’s going to leave Tatooine forever and fly with his offworld stranger friends to live in the Core, in the Republic capitol. He’s going to become a ‘Jedi’, whatever that is. All of this happens in the space of maybe a standard hour.

Greedo doesn’t buy it.

“You cheated,” he hisses at the boy after the race.

The radiance of victory hasn’t left Anakin’s face. He’s clearly taken by surprise at being accosted so while basking in the moment of triumph. It gives Greedo a sickly sort of pride that he’s able to strip the sheen off his hull plating so easily.

“No, I didn’t!” Anakin insists. “I won that race fair and square. Everyone saw it!”

Greedo had seen it, too. No one could have pulled an upset like that off. “Yeah, right. Against Sebulba? With a busted engine? No way.”

The fix had to be in, somewhere. Maybe Ani’s ‘Jedi’ friend paid Sebulba to take a dive, since apparently he likes him so much.

“I did win,” Anakin whines again. “You’re just jealous.”

Greedo snorts rudely through his snout – but the other street-rats are already listening, picking sides, tittering quietly amongst themselves. He can’t very well back down now.

“You did cheat, you little sneak. They’re gonna find out how, and once they do, they’re gonna drag you back to Mos Espa by your hair and give you back to Watto.”

Something in Anakin’s expression cracks. Greedo can see the fear in his eyes. “No, they’re not.”

“Oh yes they are,” the Rodian sneers. “They’re gonna put your tracker back in and make you polish scrap and work you til you’re old and gra—”

He would have said ‘gray’, if not for the tiny fist connecting with his jaw; the impact throws him down onto the sand. Anakin is on him just as quickly, pounding his face and shoulders with wild jabs, blinded by anger. The crowd of children around them settle into the familiar chanting which accompanies any street fight.

And then –

The moment is parted, like wind cutting smoothly over the dunes. There’s a man here now that wasn’t here before – tall, long haired, middle-aged, human. His clothes are simple, but he bears himself almost regally, as if detached or above the squabble unfolding before him. The crowd is hushed; the beating stops. In the lull, Greedo is finally able to push the little cheater off of him and sit up.

When he speaks, it’s with the voice of a father. Or at least, what they imagine a father must sound like. “What’s this all about?”

“He says I cheated,” Anakin says from the ground, fuming.

“Did you?”

“No!”, the boy replies, incredulously.

The man looks to Greedo expectantly. “Do you still think he cheated?”

His tongue probes a sore spot inside his mouth, tasting copper. “Yes.”

“Well, Ani, you know the truth,” the man says as the two climb to their feet. “You will have to tolerate his opinion. Fighting will not change it.”

Anakin is visibly not satisfied. Neither is Greedo. Both of them have lived long enough to know that this is how adults settle most disputes between children.

The man spares Greedo one last look before turning and striding away; Anakin, pointedly, does not. Neither of them offer so much as a token apology.

“Keep that up, Greedo, and you’re gonna come to a bad end,” Wald editorializes as the crowd disperses. Then he sprints away, over to the other side of the street.

Greedo wipes away a trickle of blood from his lips, and does not follow.

Chapter Text

Now, Greedo’s not stupid.

He knows that being a bounty hunter, that working for Jabba, is going to carry certain risks. He also knows that any mercenary worth their salt isn’t going out into the hunt without being properly equipped – any idiot can just buy a blaster and blunder into a gunfight, after all. The real hunters, the good ones, have all kinds of tools and tricks for every situation.

Greedo might not have the budget that some of those other hunters are running around with. But he’s clever, you see – clever enough to engineer himself a particularly devious and cheap economical gadget of his own.

The recipe? One SquibLabs sabacc holdout, the kind that sits flush against your forearm just behind your wrist; a spare throwing knife thin enough to fit in the slot once you’ve jimmied it open wider with a spanner (balanced blade optional); a spanner (for aforementioned jimmying plus tinkering with the internals) – and presto! Now you’ll always have a trick up your sleeve – literally! And for much cheaper than one of those Vac Attack discthrower models.

“You’re cra-a-azy, Greedo,” B’il’li tells him through a haze of alcohol when he shows off his new toy in a Mos Eisley alleyway. “You’re gonna hit the big time with one of those? Tha-a-at busted little gizmo will never work out.”

“Oh yeah? Just watch.” Sneering smugly, the Rodian stretches his arm out toward the opposite wall, and with a click against his wrist and a satisfying -

SHUNK

- the knife up his sleeve rockets through the air and buries its point into the graffiti-stained sandcrete.

The Gotal’s eyes goggle. He has to take another swig of bottled swill to believe them. “We-e-ell, I’ll be!”

“What’d I tell you? Works like a charm!” Greedo crosses the lane and, with a little difficulty, works the the blade back out of the wall. “The only part that gets kind of hard is when you have to get it back into the slot – you’ve gotta, uh… you’ve gotta really stick it in … come on… just – just get in there…”

The Rodian’s overlong fingers fumble with knife, sleeve, and holdout for far longer than his earlier moment of triumph is willing to wait. Watching him struggle, B’il’li’s earlier awe fades even quicker. He idly draws from his bottle as Greedo audibly flounders with the uncooperative widget.

“There!” Greedo gasps, as the knife settles into its recess with a sound that’s less click and more clunk. “All done. Easy peasy. And now you’re ready to—”

As he’s rolling his wrist, his palm passes carelessly over the cuff of his sleeve, and something must jar loose in the holdout’s internals somewhere because there’s a click and a –

SHUNK

- and suddenly his palm is exploding with pain, and he can’t quite divine exactly why until he brings it in front of his face and takes in the sight of the blade stuck all the way through the meat and bone between one side of his hand and the other. And even then, it still takes his brain a second to process it.

There’s a cough in his throat like a choke and a sob, and it leaves his snout as a kind of unflattering honk. It happens again as he cradles his impaled hand in the fingers of the other and clutches it to his chest, tears welling in the corners of his bulbous eyes. This provokes a much different reaction from his Gotal colleague, who begins belly-laughing in a distinctly caprine fashion.

“S-stop laughing!” Greedo hisses, whimpering. “I – I’ve just been stabbed! This isn’t funny!”

“Agree to disagree there, Gre-e-e-edo,” B’il’li chortles.

Glaring, the Rodian tries to dislodge the embedded blade; the suckers of his fingertips wind tremulously around the narrow pommel of the knife and tug as gingerly as they’re able, but even the most delicate touch sends pain shooting up his arm. When he goes lightheaded and his eyes are swimming in red, he finally takes the hint and stops playing with it.

“Oh, shit,” he whines, as globs of blood slide off the edge of the tip and spatter the sand, stain the toes of his boots. “Ohh, karabast, I need a medic –”

“Haw haw, ha-a-ave you tried getting the first knife out with another knife?” the Gotal interjects, and apparently the mental image of doing so is the height of comedy for him because he doubles over against the gutted Gonk droid/public trash can next to him, holding his forehead with one furry mitt as if afraid his horns will fall off from the sheer hilarity of it all.

“S-stop laughing at me! I’ve been mutilated! It isn’t funny! Now are you gonna help me or what?!”

“Ahh, sure I can. Lemme see.”

No sooner does Greedo proffer his injured hand than the Gotal seizes him by the wrist and tears out the offending foreign object without so much as a word of warning. The resulting scream sends several womp rats in the surrounding vicinity scrambling for cover in the slums’ accumulation of urban flotsam.

“WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT,” he shrieks, shoving his hand in his armpit to staunch the wound.

“You wanted help from me, I helped,” B’il’li shrugs indifferently, still chuckling. “What else was I supposed t’ do, go find a me-e-edtech?”

The Rodian growls and trudges off in search of a tub of bacta he can soak his palm in, fuming incandescently. The idiot Gotal can laugh all he wanted, but once the holdout mechanism works properly (and stop launching sharp objects straight through his hand), he and everybody else in the mercenary game better watch out.

And he can get it to work.

After all, Greedo’s not stupid.

Chapter Text

Greedo wakes up pale and lightheaded and he has no idea why.

Instead of doing anything about it, he staggers through the day in his usual fashion and falls back into his bed at Jabba’s palace at its end, in the belief that his body will figure itself out eventually with a big enough glass of Jawa juice.

Sound asleep, he doesn’t notice when the floor vent is being pried open from the inside; when it falls with a clatter against the pourstone floor, the is noise smothered under the viscous sound of the Rodian’s snoring. One of the many weird denizens of Jabba’s demesne crawls out of the hatch, a Hoover, dragging a long trunklike snout under its short body, between its squat legs – as unnoticed now as it goes in the daylight.

The nose of the trunk slithers snakelike to the fore, snorting and snuffling this way and that as the Hoover traverses the floor with its peculiar, waddling gait. When it reaches the foot of the bed, where Greedo’s boots lie in a messy pile under feet hanging off a cot too short to accommodate them, its proboscis climbs up the post of the frame and the corner of the mattress, slithering under the blanket – seeking nourishment. It finds it in one of its favorite feeding spots, a cluster of veins intersecting under the soft meat at the back of the knee.

Greedo winces, and the tips of his ears curl, when the Hoover sinks its tiny, needle-thin teeth into his flesh. Blood pools in the proboscis of the little parasite; it drinks greedily from the artery, slurping noisily, keeping time with the wind whistling through the Rodian’s lips.

Soon the Hoover has its fill of Rodian blood. It detaches from Greedo with a soft pop muffled beneath the thin sheet covering his body, sucking up the excess sustenance from the tiny bite marks its snout left behind before its victim can turn over in his sleep. Then it shuffles back into the vent and pulls it back shut, crawling back into the recesses of the palace, seeking out even more nourishment on its nightly rounds among the lushes and spice-denners who slumber in Jabba’s realm.

Greedo wakes up pale and lightheaded and he has no idea why.

Chapter Text

The Rodian mouth is a highly sensitive organ.

In many respects, it has to be – for a species which evolved without an external nose, the vomeronasal organ secreted in the hard palate of the oral cavity that many sentients take for granted as an auxiliary olfactory receptor necessarily becomes its primary method of perceiving smell. This means that every breath a Rodian takes is loaded with chemical information as well as oxygen – an exceedingly useful trait, for a people whose strong hunting tradition carried them from the swamp to the stars.

But right now, all Greedo can smell is a truly obnoxious amount of face powder, burning spice, and – strangely enough – vanilla.

“Looks like a packed house out there tonight,” Doda murmurs next to him in the eye of the dressing room hurricane, slitherhorn tucked under the arm of his dressiest frock. “Band’s gonna have to be on the top of our game if we want to help Lord Jabba make a good impression with the Carpos.”

“You lot better be,” Greedo grumbles. Bad enough he had to schlep all the way out to Lanz Carpo and play chaperone for Max Rebo in the first place – “You know how much I’m paying to rent this suit right now?”

“Don’t be sour, Greedo. It’s not every day we get out to the Core. Besides, you look smashing.”

“They charge by the hour, Doda.”

It wasn’t his only complaint, for the record. If he’d had the patience, he’d have whined about his legs swimming in these baggy pants and the gaberwool suit jacket making his shoulders itch, and the patent synthleather boots with too-high heels pinching his feet, and the frankly atrocious-looking ruffles cascading down the front of his shirt making him look like someone had pasted the pelt of a Gigoran who’d recently had a dodgy perm on his chest –

“Yeah, but when are you gonna have a chance to look this good again?”

…Well, if Doda says so, then it’s probably fine, Greedo supposes.

“Listen, if you want to take off, the band can handle itself from here.” The performer reaches out and gives the pom bloom pinned to his lapel a tweak, smirking. “Just try to enjoy yourself tonight. Have some drinks, make some friends … hey, flirt with that cutie behind the wet bar a little for me, huh? I’ll be rooting for ya.”

“Like I need the help,” Greedo tuts, pulling on his lapel.

“That’s the spirit.” Doda brushes the cheek of his snout against Greedo’s as the band begins to swirl, noisily, out of the greenroom and towards backstage. “I gotta run – have fun, buddy!”

“Break a leg,” he replies – and then he’s left alone.

Well. Not a single intruder tried to break in on the band while they were preparing – making this assignment a scragging waste of time, in hindsight. He should’ve made like B’il’li and ditched them for the bar hours ago.

He’s got time before the reception, he’s pretty sure. Enough to get some air.

He winds his way out of the bowels of the Hotel Regent – squeezing past Porcellus wheeling by with a cart overladen with decadent foodstuffs, sidestepping a furious argument between Gammorean guards and a hapless protocol droid, narrowly dodging a mouse droid as it fastidiously vaccums the carpet - and emerges in an alleyway. Humidity lands thick on his tongue; the dark and cloudy sky above, which had threatened to open up with rain any minute before, finally breaks over the city. The one bright spot in the blanket of slate and rain, the Carpo Syndicate’s Panop, hovered over the planet like a dangled blade. Never before has Greedo been so thankful for an overhang to keep him dry.

The alley smells oppressively sterile, if such a thing were possible; not even the sweet zing of petrichor can smother it. He fishes in his pocket for a spice stick and stuffs its butt into his mouth, eager to wash out that Core World taste with some unclean living.

A speeder comes prowling down the alleyway as he leans against the wall. He expects it to pass by completely and is surprised when it stops just past the side entrance; a couple of Carpo goons jump out, armored, blasters slung at their side. Looking at him.

His blaster’s weight presses insistently against his belly, secreted as it is into the band of his cummerbund. He forces himself to play it cool.

“You there.” One of the Carpos produces a holoprojector, beaming a string of words into existence with the push of a thumb. His breath smells – and tastes – terrible. “Is this your chain code?”

Greedo squints, suppressing a gag. “…Yeah,” he says, slowly. “There a problem?”

“Boss Carpo wants to see you.” The security officer gestures with his fingers; the light from the glow-panels hitting the visor of his helmet casts an unsettling sheen. “Come on, let’s go.”

“What for?”

“Just get in the speeder.”

“Look, sleemo, I’m with Jabba the Hutt—"

The other Carpo lifts his carbine.

“It’s not a request,” the first one says.

Alarm bells are going off in Greedo’s head. He needs to make some kind of move – now.

“Alright,” he says, turning back toward the door. “Just let me—“ Let me get my blaster out so I can fry you suckers—

 A gloved hand claps over his mouth, crumbling the rod of spice, pressing his lips back in against his jaw. Pain shoots all the way up his snout. Caught flat-footed, he fumbles the draw; his blaster tumbles with a clatter against the ground as his legs kick out fruitlessly, both Carpos forcing his arms apart. He swears and grunts, gagged against a palm stinking with sweat and old blood, as they frog-march him to the trunk of the speeder. Somewhere in the struggle he loses a shoe, and rainwater seeps through his dress sock with every slippery step.

Somebody gets the boot open. Even through the hand forcing his mouth shut, Greedo can smell it; the stench of death. Things have died in the trunk of this speeder. People, maybe. No - definitely.

Something desperate and primal wakes in his lungs and lets itself out in one last scream, and is strangled without a second thought by the Carpo’s hand pushing his head back by the mouth.

Something crashes most unkindly against the back of his head.

In his last moment of consciousness, his mouth fills with the scent of blood.

Chapter Text

His feet hurt.

Somehow, that’s the thing that bothers him most right now - above being thrown in a little cell with his arms chained up over his head, aching all over from body blows, one eye swelling almost shut, and his rental suit getting torn to tatters by manhandling thugs. No, it’s his kriffing feet that are killing him. Great priorities!

Well, he supposes it makes sense. He’s been standing on the balls of his feet for what feels like hours. A few minutes longer, and he’ll probably start to cramp up - and of course he just had to still be wearing one of these patent synthleather clown shoes, too.

Greedo trembles, and the chains around his wrists rattle. They’re thick links, heavy-duty stuff. The kind you pull out for ‘guests’ you’re not planning on letting leave - maybe ever. The thought makes him tremble again, though he tries to hide it under a grumble. 

Trying to shift the pressure from foot to foot does him no good; leaning even a little bit left or right pushes a point of sharp pain all the way back up to his wrists, like a vise around his hands. Balancing on one leg at a time is no help, either, since his muscles are already so locked up he can’t hold any other kind of position for long. The best he can manage is lifting one sole off the ground at a time and stretching out his toes as best he can - which, considering the aforementioned shoe, is only half as much as he can hope for.

When he can get enough moisture to pool in his mouth, he spits impotently into the corner of the cell, and hopes that whenever they get around to whatever they want to do to him (an Outer Rim-style execution, probably), that it at least goes quicker than how much of his life they’ve already wasted making him stand around like a Devlikk ballerina practicing their tippy-toe.

A hatch door slides open, and Boss Carpo strides through. Light from the dim, sickly glowpanel set into the ceiling catches his bald Bith head and the shoulders of his blood-red longcoat - as well as the silver talons of his mechno-hands. He’s flanked by two other Rodians whose fashion senses remind Greedo of his own. Well - when he’s not dressed up for some stupid party, anyway.

“The fugitive awakes,” one of the Rodians remarks, sneering.

“Remarkable that someone else hasn’t fried it yet,” the other adds, chuckling darkly.

Carpo holds up a hand and they fall silent. The hand reaches out, lifting Greedo’s chin on the tip of a claw.

“I suppose you have a great many questions right now,” he says coolly.

“Just one,” Greedo chokes. “‘How do I break out of here so I can start kicking your ass?’”

“How cute. I can see why your Grand Protector wants this one,” Carpo said over his shoulder. His audience snickered.

“You see, Greedo, myself and your boss, we’re two of a kind. Your Hutt, Jabba, he’s above all else a businessman. I like to think I’m something of a businessman myself. So, when these two nice gentlemen behind me, Thuku and Neesh, arrived on my Panop with a trade offer from the Rodian home government itself, I said to myself - ‘This is quite an opportunity. So what’s the catch?’

“And the catch was, of course, a simple matter of quid pro quo. Something for something. Only in this case, the something was a person, and the person happened to be one of Jabba’s thugs. It was an odd request. I mean, what was I supposed to do, snatch you off the side of the street and hope no one saw?”

“Y-you must not be very smart,” Greedo says, “if that’s the plan you went with?”

“It’s not,” Carpo replies. “Instead I bartered a few niceties away to Jabba in exchange for your life. And then I snatched you off the street.”

Something inside Greedo’s soul shrivels up. Thuku and Neesh must sense it happen, because they start laughing cruelly.

“Which is why you’re presently on my Panop,” Boss Carpo continues, trailing the tips of his claws down through the hideous ruffles pinned to Greedo’s sweat-soaked dress shirt. “Speeding down the Corellian Run bound for Rodia. Where I’ll hand you over to the tender mercies of Lord Navik the Red, who I understand has a particular bone to pick with you Tetsu Clan leftovers, and I in turn will receive a not insubstantial amount of unmarked credits to add to my coffers.”

His claws hover at Greedo’s hip - then dug in, passing clean through the shirtsilk and penetrating the flesh, dragging long, slow furrows into his prisoner’s side. Greedo winces, hissing, and tries not to humiliate himself by gasping in pain.

“A mutually… beneficial… transaction,” Carpo murmurs. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“D-don’t suppose I get any say in this,” Greedo mutters ruefully.

“I’m afraid not. Jabba certainly didn’t seem to think so, and that was after only minimal bribing.” Carpo cocks his head to one side, dark Bith eyes nictitating. “I wonder, why do people like you throw your lives away for slugs like that?”

“...Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Ah. Charming to the last.”

Carpo retrieves his claws with a viciously swift swipe, pulling them out of Greedo’s hide the hard way; he gasps finally, cringing, as droplets of his blood spattered on the floor. Adding insult to injury, the gangster then cuts the ruffles off his shirt to use for wiping his claws clean.

“Now, I could stay and while away the time with a little more one-on-one time with you, but to be honest, you don’t rate that kind of attention. And for all their charms, I don’t particularly trust these two gentlemen and their peculiar zeal alone with you, as I’ve mentioned I stand to gain a significant sum from your safe delivery, so… I suppose you’ll have to spend the rest of this flight alone. Though from what I’ve heard of your business relations, that’s nothing especially new for you, is it, Mr. Greedo?”

Carpo tosses the ruffle-rag into a corner and sweeps out of the room. Thuku and Neesh make to follow him - but then Thuku throws out a leg behind him, swiping Greedo’s aching feet out from under him, making him jerk on his chains like a marionette on its strings. The prisoner squawks in alarm, scrabbling for footing on the slick floor underneath him, whining like a trapped animal. The sound brings Thuku great pleasure; he cackles as the door slides shut behind him.

It’s the dress shoe, that one damnable shoe, that saves him. It’s got more traction than a Chandrilan nylon sock by dint of having an actual tread, and it catches on the edge of a tile, allowing him to finally sort-of climb his way back to his feet. Even so, Greedo - true to form - makes life more difficult than it has to be in order to finally free himself from its confines, hooking the toes of his free foot around its heel and slowly peeling his way out of its mouth. When he finally has both feet back on the ground, he’s even shakier than before.

But at least his foot can breathe again.

Small miracles.

Chapter Text

He’s not exactly conscious for most of the flight to Rodia. To be honest, he fades in and out over the course of a couple hours. When he finally comes most of the way back to himself, what’s left of his suit has been shorn off entirely and he’s strapped half-naked to a hovergurney, being pushed along under a cold, dark ceiling, cast in dim orange light by something in the floors.

Whatever’s at the end of this probably isn’t going to be good, Greedo thinks. 

(He’s right, of course.)

After some time, they at last reach their destination, wherever that is. There are bright lights up above, and mechanical armatures, and lots and lots of tubing and what looks like a giant crane arm. It’s cold here, Greedo realizes - he tastes the bitter freeze on his tongue with every breath, feels it burn against his skin, cutting right through the rough canvas trousers his captors have “generously” provided for him.

He shivers, big eyes rolling in their sockets, trying to take in his surroundings. A circle of shadowy figures lines the room - all Rodian. He recognizes the cut of their armor, the smug, sadistic glint in their eyes.

Chattzas!

He’s about to suck in the breath to offer them some choice words when a hand seizes the nub of his chin, turning his head sharply to the left. Whatever confidence he’s managed to summon evaporates like water on a hot vaporator under the gaze of a tall Rodian in full Grand Protector’s battle-armor, a thick splash of red running across his face. 

Not blood, no. A birthmark. The one which lent Navik the Red his sobriquet.

Greedo gulps, blinking through what he hopes is a tranq-induced hallucination. His heart hammers in his chest as Rodia’s military dictator twists his face this way and that, peering down at him disdainfully - as if he were scum Navik had picked out from between his teeth, or a fat thistlenit pressed to a oily smear under the heel of his jackboot. The thought of being looked down upon so casually would have made Greedo’s blood boil - if the Butcher of Clans himself wasn’t holding him between his thumb and forefinger.

It’s ironic. All his life, Greedo has been trying to be a big man - on good days he even believes that he is that big, and it’s just that nobody else has noticed yet.

He doesn’t feel very big at all right now. He feels very, very small.

Navik the Red muses aloud as he inspects his captive: “With the benefit of hindsight, I see now that I was, if anything, too hasty in prosecuting the Clan Wars of my ascendant youth. Had I sooner realized realized that my victory were inevitable I might have perhaps kept the clarity of vision to allow a more… impressive specimen of Tetsu Clan to survive the hunt, in expectation of this day. Your father, perhaps, as dangerous as his skill made him to my plans. That I might remember them by their best, as opposed to reducing myself to sifting through the… leftovers.”

Greedo has not thought about his father in many years. It was his father that had made him want to be a great hunter. If he’d known this was the kind of attention it would get him, he would have made himself into something much more boring, like a banker or a grocer.

“I suppose it matters little in the end,” Navik shrugs, throwing Greedo’s chin roughly away. “When the new Clans see your sad, misbegotten shape hanging from my wall, your pedigree will be irrelevant. The tales of the Tetsus’ culling are legacy enough to justify your presence among my trophies.” 

Greedo’s tongue is fat and dry in his mouth; he does not speak. If he could he’d say something stupid and obvious, like: Trophies? What trophies?

“Your agony shall be exquisite , my young kybuck,” the butcher leers, leaning in closer. “Like a fly preserved in amber. Entombed alive, forever.

“At the moment when you pass so deep into hibernation that you finally succumb to braindeath, remember that your example will bring much pleasure to myself and my court, and take solace in that as your final thought escapes you.”

Oh, gods. Jabba’s nothing compared to this. This is cruelty that grows out from the marrow.

What in the galaxy is going to happen to him?

Chuckling, Navik the Red sighs pleasantly as he straightens. He nods to the guards stewarding the gurney. “Put him in.”

Greedo hears latches clicking, feels the straps around his body loosening. For a blessed, desperate moment, he thinks he remembers what freedom feels like.

Then the table pivots, throwing him roughly onto his hands and knees on the floor, in the center of a durasteel platform ringed by grated deck panels backlit in smoky orange. A carbon freezing chamber, it finally clicks, that’s what this is - and no sooner does he remember than the platform he’s sitting on begin to descend into the pit below him.

Okay, don’t panic, something in his brain whispers urgently. I know this looks bad, but this is the part where you spring into action and blast your way out of here!

So what do I do? Greedo forces his way up onto bare feet, shivering, whimpering. What do I do? What do I do what do I do?

Uhhhhh, the voice says. Good question.

Freezing cold geysers erupt from all sides. It is his last conscious thought.

For a time, he is hung proudly among other trophies in Navik the Red’s grim collection, headquartered in Eanca Goa-Ato, the Grand Protector’s Guild Hall, for the viewing pleasure of both his subjects and his sycophants.

There, in the Awards Hall, his slab occupies a space on the wall between a huge taxidermied ghest and an even larger Kwazel Maw beast. A holoplaque helpfully informs visitors that they are witnessing “The Last Tetsu” - in permanent captivity. Knowing their Grand Protector’s reputation, few question the veracity of such an authoritative statement - and even fewer show sympathy for the wretched creature frozen in carbonite before so many watchful Chattza eyes.

If any do at all, Greedo certainly wouldn’t know, even with his eyes open  - a glaze of gray solidified over them before they could blink, likewise trapping the rest of his body in the position it had taken just before the flash-freezing bath could finish hardening. His hands ended up at the level of his chest, palms out, like a man caught on the wrong end of a stick-up; his face is contorted in a permanent grimace of fear.

Here he’ll hang until Navik grows bored of him and transfers him to one of his unmarked holding vaults on Scipio with the rest of whatever gruesome treasures he’s hoarded away, or until hibernation can sustain him no longer and he stops thinking.

Until then, and even after, Greedo is alone with his thoughts and nightmares - forever.

Chapter Text

The stun beam that caught Greedo square in the back was a nasty surprise. His legs turning to numb jelly and collapsing underneath him was even worse. Being left helpless there on the ground while blasterfire singed the air above him was stressful, but fairly typical, considering the way this day was going.

Twice, he tries to lever himself up to his knees, but only made it as far as his arms alone could lift him; sharp gravel cuts his palms and elbows as he tries to crawl away from the crossfire. His legs drag uselessly behind him, only dimly reporting the sensation of being dragged along the rocky floor.

A pair of clawed feet land with a crash in the space he was about to reach for - each of them connected to scaly, trunklike calves whose knees disappear under the legs of a banana yellow flightsuit.

“On your feet, Rodian!” Bossk barks at him from above. “The quarry’s getting away!”

“I can’t,” Greedo whines. “I’ve tried!”

“What do you mean you can’t?!”

“My legs–! I can’t feel my legs!” He tries one more time to force them to cooperate, and manages the faintest twitch of a big toe inside his boot. It’s the most responsive they’ve been since he was hit.

Bossk snarls, turning to scan the ridgeline through his rifle’s targeting scope. “I better not lose these points because of you.”

“How was I supposed to know they had an ion beamer?!”

Somewhere close - but too far away for their liking - came the sound of sunlight engines grumbling into life. Soon, the ululation steadied, and rose in pitch and distance up towards the sandy-colored sky.

The Trandoshan snorts, slinging the rifle on his back. “Fierfekking amateur,” he spits over his shoulder. “You’d better hope I can still pick them up on scanners before they leave the system.”

For a moment, a terrible thought seizes Greedo: “Wait – you’re not gonna just leave me here, are you?”

“It’d serve you right. But lucky for you, some of us still have to observe the Code.”

Bossk bends and bundles the lanky Rodian into his arms; the fit is snug, if none too gentle. His legs spill out over Bossk’s arm and dangle lifelessly like the tail of a freshly-caught pierceskimmer. He lifts Greedo like he weighs nothing, and to a Trandoshan, he probably doesn’t.

On instinct, Greedo slings an arm around Bossk’s neck, hooking his wrist with the opposite hand and missing completely the deathly-annoyed glare the lizard shoots in his direction. “Alright, alright - just don’t drop me, okay? This is embarrassing enough as it is.”

The Trandoshan snorts. His breath, Greedo notes, stinks in a distinctly carnivorous way. “You’re lucky your hide’s not worth the effort,” he growls as he marches in the direction of the Hound’s Tooth .

“Does that mean you’re not gonna skin me?”

“Don’t know yet. Things change. And the hunt makes me hungry. We’ll see.”

Greedo gulps and tries to force more feeling into his feet. Depending on how the rest of the day goes, he might need them.

Chapter Text

Bib Fortuna serves at the pleasure of His Excellency Jabba Desilijic Tiure of Nal Hutta, Eminence of Tatooine, Daimyo of Mos Espa and the greater of the settled Dune Sea territories. It is a position he has occasion to resent as much as to relish. 

To be the seneschal of a Hutt is to be both majordomo and martinet; one must simper and scrape for the protected and powerful as fiercely as one must punish the scum and villainy which congregates at the foot of their throne. In many ways, the grievances of one half of such an existence tend to feed the chastisements of the other. A purging, of sorts; a catharsis through the whip.

For these purposes, he finds Greedo particularly handy. A perennial bungler makes for a convenient scapegoat - and Bib could always use more practice refining his method of scientific beating.

The procedure is simple. The Gamorreans drag the hapless Rodian down into a dungeon cell, strip off his boots, and lash his ankles to a quarterstaff. This is held horizontally between the two of them, leaving Greedo flat on his back in the sand and dirt coating the floor. Bib Fortuna, meanwhile, ensures that the wand of his shockwhip is appropriately supple before thumbing the activation stud. The hilt buzzes pleasantly in his palm; an electric charge crackles silently as it currents up and down the tapered shaft.

A certain amount of coordination is required, now - one must land the blow precisely, partly to avoid any permanent damage to the delicate bones and nerves, but mostly to inflict an appropriately optimal degree of pain and suffering. For these reasons, the vault of the foot - the delicate curve formed by the arches bridging the heel to the ball -  is the ideal place for delivering punishment.

The wand of the whip makes a gratifying swish through the air, like a vibroblade. Bib places his blow carefully. Then another. Then another. Then another.

Greedo has no tolerance for pain. He gasps and whimpers, writhing on the ground beneath his torturers; his long toes curl tighter against his soles with every lash, trembling from the sensation of electrification. Sometimes, he’ll choke out an anguished, tearful squeal, and the Gamorreans will chuckle piggishly at the sound. Bib allows only a moment to relish the agony he inflicts before pressing on.

Five strokes becomes ten. Ten becomes fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-five. With each stroke, the Majordomo releases a sliver of pent-up frustration. But the punishment will continue until he feels appropriately satisfied, at which time he shall fetch for another of Jabba’s slave to ‘correct’ - and that will not be for a long while, yet.

Chapter Text

The binder cuff chafes his wrist something awful. But not nearly as much as the personality of the man shackled at the other end.

“Remind me again why your buddies have us chained together?”, the mark asks. Bravado and fake charm oozes off him like sap off the thinekk trees. Like dirt off his sweaty skin. Smug little poodoo-head. Young Greedo can’t wait to be rid of him.

“So you don’t run off while Warhog lets our client know we caught you,” he explains, with what he decides is an appropriate amount of condescension.

“Right, right,” the target says, nodding understandingly. “I get it now. You’re the babysitter.”

“Pah - I’m no babysitter!”

“Oh, my mistake. Guess it was the other way around.”

Greedo huffs out a minor-league cuss and kicks the seated urchin in the shin just because he can. “We’ll see how funny you are when we hand you back over to Lady Proxima, sleemo!”

“Yeah, sure thing, kid. You guys expecting a big payout for this? Or do big-time hunters like you have nothing better to do than panhandle from the street gangs down in the armpit of Coronet City?”

“Warhog Goa doesn’t need to waste time on little fish like you, scrumrat! …This is just part of my appr- apprentish–... part of my training!”

“Any of that training happen to include Basic lessons? ‘Cause, you know, maybe it should-–”

“Shut UP!”, Greedo snaps, and smacks the scrumrat around the ear. He uses his stuncuffed hand to do so, forcing him to momentarily play an unwilling game of ‘stop hitting yourself’. From the look on his face, he apparently thinks it’s funny. 

Kriffing Humans.

The Rodian glances across the rainy, mud-strewn street. Goa is at the other end, his squat, stout body barely tall enough to clear the control board of the holobooth. He’s talking to… somebody - Greedo can’t quite make out who. Their contact with the White Worms, probably. He doesn’t let Greedo do much of the talking. Yeah, we got the kid , it looks like he’s saying; Yeah, we’ll be on time for the rendezvous. Another of those big Basic words that doesn’t fit in Greedo’s snout right and sounds worse coming out his mouth. One day, he hopes. One day.

He settles back onto his heels and lets his eyes wander up towards the sky. Industrial skyscrapers stretch like blackened, corroded fingers up past the slums and the streets to almost try to enclose the sky in their grasp, choked as it is by smoggy clouds and sickly-golden light pollution. An ugly planet, he decides - a Human planet. Same difference. It reminds him not wholly unpleasantly of Nar Shaddaa.

He’s still lost in thought when the scrumrat, sensing distraction, makes a run for it. He doesn’t bother trying to pick the lock on the stuncuffs; being a larger boy, and stronger, he takes a chance on generating so much momentum that he can just pull the flatfooted Rodian along behind him until he loses his better-armed pals in the slum warrens. In this, he is so successful that Greedo almost falls flat on his chin, and barely keeps his feet underneath him as he gets towed along for the ride.

“H-hey! What are you doing?! Stop! Stop—!”

The mark doesn’t even acknowledge him, just drags him forward roughly along the muck-encrusted walkway as he sprints down the edge of the street. It stings, being so easily overpowered - and so easily ignored - but Greedo doesn’t know which stings worse.

“Goa!” he cries, pulling fruitlessly on his fettered wrist, heels leaving gripless trails through the grime. “Goa! Help me!”

There’s a lamppost coming up. Greedo, stricken by panic, gives it no thought - not the pole, not the position of himself and the bounty on either side of it, not the thought of what might happen should their joined hands not be separated before they speed past it - until its presence asserts itself in the way only a sudden hard turn and head-on collision can.

The urchin’s chin meets his forehead with a CRACK , square between the eyes. Greedo sees stars, hears a high-pitched ringing. When he comes back to himself, he’s sitting flat on his duff, limbs jumbled together with the prisoner’s - save one arm, strung up by tangled binder links to a permanent raised position, like an eager youngling in the classroom. The other guy massages his chin with one hand, grimacing, and Greedo wonders dazedly if it always had that big cleft down the middle.

A trio of Goas is approaching, swirling and swirling in a blurry gyre. Through the whine in his ears, Greedo hears something (barely) that sounds like a question nested in a handful of profanities, as is typical for a spacer’s vocabulary.

“He almost escaped, Warhog!” he reports, words slurred. “But I caught him again!”

Goa stares down at him from over his long, broad beak, mouth pulled to the side in distaste. He grabs the Rodian by the scruff of his collar to haul him back to his feet, and his grasp is neither gentle nor proud.

Greedo, elated, doesn’t notice. Because, as he reminds Goa, “I caught him! — I caught him!”

Chapter Text

Greedo hadn’t thought of it as a big deal, at first. The smuggler said he’d be good for Jabba’s credits, if he had a little more time; he even offered to cut Greedo in on a share of the profits for his trouble. To Greedo, that sounded like a win-win.

But when he told Goa how things went, the old Diollan went off like a detonite charge.

“You LET HIM OFF?!”

Greedo flinched. Goa hadn’t turned from his workbench, but his hands had frozen where they were, cradling his blaster rifle; his beak remained turned down at it, shoulders raised like his hackles. For a moment Greedo wondered if the outburst had even happened at all.

“Not exactly,” he stammered. There’s more, but the words stick and die in his throat.

Goa drops the weapon back onto the tabletop with a clatter. Air rushed in through his nostrils with a hiss as he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “What’d’you mean, ‘not exactly’?”

“I mean— I just gave him an extension.”

“An extension.”

“Yeah. That’s what it’s called, right? When you get more time to pay somebody back?”

There came a grunt that sounded vaguely affirmative, but not at all positive.

“Well… well, he said he’d be good for it and to come back next week, so… no problem, right?”

At that, Goa slapped his palms onto the bench and pushes himself to his feet. His stool tipped and collapsed onto its side as he wheeled around, the accident for the moment going unnoticed.

“No, BIG problem, vac-for-brains,” he said, stomping toward his charge. “It means you just let one of Jabba’s smugglers not pay his tithe - his VERY LATE TITHE - when I told him we’d have his money ready for him, like he ordered us to!”

“Wait, wait— I can explain—!”

“No no no, let me explain, greenie, since you obviously don’t have two braincells to scrape together: Hutt kajidics ain’t like whatever scrum rat street gangs you ran with on Nar Shaddaa. There’s rules to follow, see? And everybody has to respect ‘em. You know what rule number one is? The big one?!” 

He pushed Greedo backwards, jabbing his finger into his belly with every step, the mingled stink of Pica Thundercloud and Tatooine Sunburn heavy on his breath. He could barely take half a breath to reply before Goa snagged him by his ear and pulled him down to his level.

“DON’T MESS WITH THEIR SHUKKING CASH FLOW,” the Diollan roars.

“Ngahh! Leggo, Goa…!”

“So since he didn’t pay Jabba, and he didn’t pay us, so we can’t pay Jabba… where’s the cash coming from, squirt? How’s the fat slug gonna get his cut?”

“It’s coming, it’s coming!” Greedo yelped as the Diollan boxed his ear. “I swear!”

“Coming from where , shit-for-brains?! Coming from who ?!”

“He said he’d be good for it—!”

“How’d’ya know he wasn’t good for it when you asked?! What if, and pardon me if I’m going too fast for you to keep up here, what if you got farkin’ played and that lowlife ‘smug is laughing all the way to Wild Space with money that belongs to your blasted boss?!”

Greedo whined as Goa smacked him once more upside the head. “He said he’d cut us in! H-he was about to turn a profit on the Llianic run—!”

“He bribed you with money he didn’t even have ?! You— Shukking— I can’t even—”

Goa balled up his fists under his chin, purpling with rage; for a few seconds, he produced a muffled escalating whine not unlike a Cosian teakettle. When he finally dropped them to his sides, he was suddenly and unnervingly calm. The glint in his eyes was neither that of fury, nor disappointment — just open contempt. 

“Let me ask you something. You really think you’re worth a bribe, kid? Some lowlife no-talent loser from the swamp like you? You think you’re worth that kinda money?”

The Rodian’s head twitches from left to right. “No,” he insisted, “t-that’s not it at all, we were gonna split it— everything I bring in, we— we always split it…"

“Don’t make me laugh,” Goa snarled. “You think that’s what we’re doing here, Greedo? You think when me and Dyyz picked you outta the gutter scum on Nar Shaddaa an’ promised you you’d be a big shot bounty hunter, it was outta the goodness of our hearts? You think anybody worth anything at all was ever gonna waste that kind of time and effort on a fool kid like you?”

It felt like the floor had suddenly dropped out from under Greedo. He stared numbly at the Diollan sneering at him, shocked by such open disdain marring the face of a man he’d implicitly trusted as a mentor and a friend. As family, even.

“Let me clue you in, twerp: you’re not smart. You’re not talented. You’ve got no skills, you’ve got no prospects - hells, you don’t even smell right half the time. You and your kind ain’t good for nothin’, cept filling space and dying, got that? No Rodian has ever made it big as a bounty hunter, ever — and if they do , Chobb forbid, it won’t be some pathetic little grub like you.”

“...Then why am I here?” he asked finally. “Why did— why did you—”

“I took you in because you saved my ass, once , long ago, and since I’m such a nice guy I thought maybe that was worth paying back. But I guess I was wrong about that because you’ve done nothing since but soak up air and piss away your keep since then. So now, instead of worrying about all that big important grown ups’ business you clearly can’t handle, you exist to get me Sunburns.”

Greedo finally wilted under the force of Goa’s glare. The Diollan snorted decisively as he hiked up his belt, turned back to his workbench, and picked his stool back upright.

“Now go get me another Sunburn,” he ordered over his shoulder. “Useless fierfekking moof-milker,” he grumbled, just loud enough to be heard, as he took up his blaster again.

Nodding meekly, the Rodian shrank away through the hatch, head bowed.

Chapter Text

In journalistic reporting and fictional accounts that spread across the Holonet, the facts of blaster weaponry and its effects on the body are inevitably simplified and homogenized into the same vaguely-defined category as “lasers” for the benefit of public consumption. The reality, on what could very justifiably be called the molecular level, is quite different. 

In the strictest sense, blasters don’t shoot “lasers” at all; they fire a burst of hyperexcited energy particles which behave in a fashion more akin to old-fashioned slugthrower projectiles than a beam of directed energy, with the exception of traveling faster and further at the cost of losing cohesion over sufficient time and distance. Moreover, conventional particle beam weaponry, for which the catch-all “blaster” has become accepted vernacular, can attain a greater degree of intensity and power compared to combustion-fired slug rounds - an intensity which brings with it an unparalleled degree of versatility, changing from a non-lethal stun setting or a harmless electromagnetic pulse at the touch of a dial to better meet the needs of the situation. And all of this is to say nothing of their unmatched portability; the average Outer Rim spacer can feed their blaster for several months from one pack of tibanna, where it would be a minor miracle for several magazines of bullets to last to the end of the week. All of these comparative advantages have made the archetypical blaster pistol the armament of choice for civilians, traders, law enforcement, and criminals alike the galaxy over.

Indeed, the adaptability of the blaster mechanism is such that they tend to take on a life of their own in the hands of an experienced outlaw tech after retail; at their most potent, an unassuming hand cannon can deliver a blast capable of breaking through purpose-built armor plate - or thick, molded duracrete, commonly poured, set, and shaped for quick and cheap cantina furnishings. This makes every encounter with a gun-toting scoundrel potentially more than meets the eye, a fact that every lawman and bounty hunter would keep well in mind - those with any sense in their heads, anyway.

To the untrained eye, most of the aforementioned advantages of blastershot over kinetic projectiles are merely concussive; this overlooks the significantly different effect that properly excited bolts of tibanna can have on the body.

Picture a superheated ball bearing onto a block of wax; slowly, inexorably, boring its way through layers of accumulated lipids. On a chemical level this is not so dissimilar to what happens to unprotected flesh. Tissue ablates; lipids bake; organs carbonize. What flesh doesn’t cauterize on impact tends to bleed, sucking wet wounds that need time and nursing to close without the effect of bacta, never mind scar; what doesn’t clot into crackly blisters tend to flake away into ash. Depending on its severity, the resultant cavity might also smoke for several minutes thereafter; the stench of burning tends to linger for much longer. 

The newsnets tend to bowlderize the details of violence, and the holodramas all but romanticize it, but on a purely objective lebel the science of blaster wounds is clear: it is a painful, agonizing experience to be shot, and life expectancies for those unlucky enough to catch a round without proper body armor tend to be nasty, and short.

This all assumes, of course, that the afflicted remains consciousness long enough to recognize the magnitude of what’s happened to them, of what will happen to them — the acute neurological sensory cascade that comes with the rapid ingestion of accelerated particle energy means many victims often lapse directly into catatonia upon contact, a phenomenon harnessed to make possible the ‘harmless’ stun setting built into many blasters sold today.

Which means Greedo has neither the time nor the presence of mind to appreciate any of this in the instant of consciousness he has left. The time between receiving the wound Solo deals him under the table and the complete shutdown of his body could be most precisely measured in nanoseconds. Motor control simply evaporates; his muscles just — slacken, like a droid that’s been powered down. His forehead hits the tabletop with a crack—

And as far as anyone else is concerned, that’s where the story ends. Bang, thud, “sorry about the mess”. Rimshot. Roll credits.

Chapter Text

But somehow Greedo’s story continues.

He doesn’t come to all at once, but in bits and pieces. Primordial instinct fights through a thick haze of stupefaction to regain awareness; his brain struggles for an eternity just to pry his eyelids open. His tongue is a fat, rough slug nesting in his mouth, dry like the Dune Sea - useless, for the moment. But more concerning are his limbs - he can manage a bit of movement from most of his joints, but his ankles and wrists remain stubbornly fixed in place no matter how limply he writhes. 

Where is he? It’s cold here, wherever he is. His eyes can’t focus - it’s bright in some spots of his vision, dark in others. He remembers smoke and heat, like a punch in the gut, and the stench — something burning—

The cantina. Solo. Did that sleemo get away? How? What happened? Why can’t he get up?

He cranes his neck to peer over his chest —

Oh. Oh no. Oh, High Hunters, no.

Where’s his belly gone? Why is there a hole, why is it so big, why can he see tubes and cables running inside his— no no no, don’t look don’t look, looking makes it real and it’s not real, this isn’t real, it can’t be—

“Ahhh, look who’s back in the land of the living.”

Lights switch on with a heavy clunk, harsh and brutal. Greedo squeezes his eyes shut tight, shivering, whimpering. Nothing between earth and space could convince him to open them again.

“And still lucid, I see. Good thing I thought of the containment field for these procedures - my own design, you see, some patients can be so difficult .”

It’s an operating table. Might as well be a butcher’s block; the outcome would be the same. 

“To tell the truth, some of us were hoping you’d be braindead by now, but … in some ways this is better for us all, no?”

Please let him just die. Right here, right now. He doesn’t even have to join the Hunters’ Host, he can just fizzle out into the ambient nothing of the universe. Just deliver him from this terrible place.

“Ah, but you can’t go back under just yet! There’s still plenty of intake we need to go through before your procedure.”

Grimy fingers pry his eyelids apart anyway. Silhouetted between the haloed glare is a face like half-melted wax. His name is Evazan; he is a doctor. The kind that carries a death mark from twelve different systems - and deserves every single one.

“And I have much more planned for you,” he wheezes. 

It doesn’t matter if he lives or dies anymore. Either way, Greedo knows he’s in hell.

Chapter Text

"Don't mind the iodine -- the staining comes out eventually, even for Rodians. And most of this discoloration won't be a problem for you much longer.

Now you may be wondering why you've ended up in this position; I know Ponda has been wondering why we've gone so far out of our way to keep you alive, haven't you, partner. And the answer to that, my revolting little reptile, is rather simple - you offered yourself to us freely that we might, at a future point in time, share the proceeds won in exchange for the successful capture of one Han Solo at the behest of Daimyo Jabba D. Tiure, alive and/or slightly mutilated; that arrangement, as I'm sure you recall, fell through in rather spectacular fashion - to the great detriment of my associate Ponda here. So now, as your business partners, we feel obligated to guarantee some small return on investment before we go our separate ways. Our, ahah, 'pound of flesh', as it were. You're a businessman yourself, dear boy, I'm sure you understand.

We do sympathize with your position, you know - bounty hunting is, naturally, after 'artist' and 'freelance holistiopathic surgeon', one of the complicated professions of the universe - and so we've arranged for your recompense to arrive in installments, in a manner of speaking. This way you'll be able to both directly repay us for indignities suffered and have the fortune to directly observe your contributions to aesthetic science over time. This is an exceptional opportunity for one in your position, Greedo me lad, so I hope you appreciate it properly - rare is the man who can directly observe the groundwork of his own legacy, after all...

Hm? Oh - the matter of your abdominothorax majoris . Yes, quite beyond saving, I'm afraid. Superheated gutshots will do that. Don't worry your pretty little head, the artificials function just as well, more or less. In the long run. With, arh, regular specialty maintenance...

(Truth be told, the barman said he needed the offal for a 'thing'. I didn't ask questions and you probably shouldn't either. Awful shifty, that one.)

Now then, we’ll be recording for posterity - the gag is mostly there to keep you from biting off your own tongue, so do the courteous thing and keep any whimpers and mewlings to a minimum, please? We want to make sure the audio is as clean as possible for Surgica Galactica’s consideration… although I suppose screaming makes for better returns on the dark holonet. Hm. On second thought, go where the scene takes you.

Ahem-hem. ‘Experimental procedure in trans-species transplant of the right forearm, stage one; clinical separation of the affected limb via Lyzztyn vibro-scalpel, minimal anesthesia. Operating physician: Doctor Cornelius Evazan … re-certification pending’…

Now then. Initial incision in three – two –

Hhhrk– ghhhrgg– Gah, damn. I could have sworn I charged this thing. Oh well. Quit thrashing so much, you’ll only make it worse –

Ponda! Fetch some lemonade. Who knew bonecutting was such thirsty work!

Ahhh, that’s better. Right then, where was I –

Almost there – alllmooost theeeere – aaaaand…!

Gah! Chobb, who knew you Rodians were such gushers – let me just get this onto ice before I tighten up the tourniquet…

Aaand time! Some fine doctoring there if I do say so myself. Now all that’s left to do is prep the recipient for surgery and we’ll be back in business, eh, Ponda my friend?

…What’s that look for?

What do you mean, ‘you don’t like the look of it’? Do you want your shooting hand back or not? Just stick it on like a leggotd set, problem solved!  … Well, yes, you might be a little slower than before, but considering what we have to work with –

‘Just put it back’??? You think viable tissue is just going to fall out of a garbage chute around here?! You DO realize you’re restricting my art right now!?

Oh, look, now the donor’s passed out. Happy? Ugh. The absolute nerve of some people.

Fine, fine, ‘bog-standard reattachment of the right forearm,’ blah blah blah, just bring the nerve stapler over here before this drip completely dries out.”